In the manufacture of bedding materials such as pillow top mattresses and furniture cushions, in which an upper padded layer or layers is enclosed within a fabric panel that is attached by gusset to an accompanying pad or spring unit, the various components often are measured, cut and sewn to mattress or foundation panels in a series of separate operations performed at separate sewing stations. For example, in a pillow-top style mattress, a pillow-top is attached to a top panel of the mattress by a gusset that generally is formed from a folded band of material similar to the material from which the mattress tops are made. The gussets are often folded and sewn to the panel along the fold line of the gussets, and further generally have a flange that is attached along a lower edge portion, which flange subsequently will be stapled to a mattress frame. The upper edge portion of the gusset is then attached to the pillow top for attaching the pillow top pad to the mattress. The gusset further can have ruffles or pleats formed at its corners to allow the gusset to turn about the corners of the mattress to provide a more finished, rounded and smooth contour or appearance thereto.
Previously, the gusset forming and sewing process, including the formation of the ruffled corners thereof, typically was done manually, wherein the gusset material would be flanged and thereafter ruffled at its corners, and subsequently attached to the edges of a mattress panel. The pillow top would then be attached to the upper or free edge of the gusset. In addition to being extremely labor intensive, such manual sewing operations often require highly skilled workers and enable only limited production. Additionally, if the ruffles at the corners of the gussets were not made at the correct angles or an insufficient amount or size of ruffles were formed at the corners, the gusset corners would not have a smooth contour or appearance. Further, there was a risk that the gusset would not match the mattress panel to which it is to be sewn, thus requiring reworking or re-sewing of the gusset.
More recently, automated systems have been developed for forming and sewing attachment gussets having ruffled corners that are formed as the gussets are attached to a mattress panel. Such systems enable significant increases in production and greatly reduce the level of skill required by an operator and/or enable operators to run multiple machines at the same time, greatly improving the production of the mattress panels with ruffled gussets. One draw-back that has been seen with such equipment, however, is that when the gussets for pillowtop type mattresses are folded in half and sewn along the fold line to the mattress panel, the increased thickness in the gusset material creates problems in sewing the gusset to the mattress panel. This is especially a problem when a thick gusset material is used and doubled when folded over. In addition, for pillow-top mattresses, it is important that there be sufficient ruffles formed in the gusset to enable the bottom or lower edge portion of the gusset to be attached in a substantially flat lying arrangement with the border or base of the mattress. For extremely thick materials and for pillow-top mattresses where there is an offset between the upper and lower portions of the gusset, however, it is difficult to form a sufficient number of ruffles that are small enough to enable the lower portion of the gusset to lie flat when attached to the mattress, while at the same time enable the upper portion to have a substantially upstanding “cupped” attitude for the attachment of the pillow-top thereto.
Still further, such automated systems often have folders for directing a portion of the gusset material over the remainder of the gusset material to form the fold, as desired. Such folders are, however, typically limited to a narrow range of widths or sizes of gusset materials that can be folded thereover and further limit the extent or amount of folding, and thus the amount of offset that can be created in the gussets. As a result, it is often necessary when running different size gusset materials that the folders must be changed out, thus requiring the operators to have multiple different size folders on hand to accommodate such changes in the gusset materials. Still further, the thickness of folded gusset materials often prevents the area or region where the leading and trailing ends of the gussets overlap to lay substantially flat when finished. As a result, operators must, at times, remove lines of stitching from the ends of the gusset after sewing to the mattress panel, trim and fold back the plies of gusset material at the trailing end of the gusset, and thereafter fold or tuck the end of the trailing end of the gusset back under the leading end for sewing.
Similarly, while automated systems have been developed for measuring, cutting and forming borders for attaching to a foundation frame such as a mattress or box springs, a drawback of such systems is, however, that they generally are limited in the type and number of sewing operations that can be performed to form foundation borders. In addition, it recently has become more desirable to fashion foundation borders with mitered corners to form “Continental Foundation Borders,” wherein a portion of the border will be folded over and laid flat on top of a foundation panel to which the border is attached, with the corners of the border being mitered and sewn so as to form a flat, finished and substantially even appearance with the foundation panel top. Conventional automated border sewing workstations generally are not designed to form such mitered corners. As a consequence, the mitered corners typically will be formed manually by an operator who must measure, cut and notch mitered corners in a plain foundation border to form a Continental foundation border. The border thereafter must be subjected to a subsequent, later sewing operation to attach the notched portions of the Continental foundation border to a foundation panel, which in turn must later be sewn to a foundation frame in order to form a foundation having a Continental foundation border. Such additional measuring, cutting and sewing operations further increase the time, labor and expense involved in the manufacture of such Continental foundation borders and thus the subsequent foundations or mattresses to which they are attached.
Accordingly, it can be seen that there is a need for a system and method of producing pillowtop attachment gussets and foundation borders for bedding materials having ruffled corners and which enable their ends to be closed and sewn in a flat configuration about a mattress or foundation panel, which addresses the foregoing and other related and unrelated problems in the art.